


Memory and Time Machines

by Wojelah



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Remix Duello 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/pseuds/Wojelah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy had been first.  Truthfully,  it had to be Amy first.  Red hair and soft lips and kisses that tasted just a tiny bit of tears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory and Time Machines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sqbr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqbr/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Time Traveler's Guide to Creative Anachronism](https://archiveofourown.org/works/82537) by [sqbr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqbr/pseuds/sqbr). 



> Title is from Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else: "I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine."

River finds the book later, after the reunions and the laughter and the tears, after she's hugged her team and met the children, after she's been shown the house and her rooms and the whole electronically infinite span of possibilities that come with being saved by the Library. (And by the Doctor, she thinks. Wherever there are infinite possibilities, the Doctor's likely to have a hand in it. And she knows quite well that he's saved her. She'd like to think that in some little way, she's saved him. If nothing else, she wrote him down, right here, in a little blue book.)

She finds it later, tucked unobtrusively among the books on her bedside table, small and battered and blue. (She'd written Amelia Pond down too. Many times. She's saved a little bit of Amy too.)

She finds it, and it makes her sit down on the bed with a thump, a rush of sadness and love and joy sweeping through her. Even in Utopia, apparently, it is possible for a person to have had a long day, even if it's a mostly happy one. (Some days are special. Some days, everybody lives. Some days, you find a virtual version of the memory book you thought you'd left behind.)

She turns to the spidery script on the first pages, runs her finger over those first few lines, and pauses at the sketch of Amy Pond.

River has lived everyone's life but hers in a thoroughly non-linear fashion, and she's enjoyed every moment. Well - most of them, she supposes. Even the moments of frantic terror turned out to be great stories in the end, though the vagaries of time travel tend to make for some confusion in the telling. And there's always the spoilers to watch out for. (She can still remember the wariness in the Doctor's eyes, the first time he'd met her. A life lived out of order is really hell on the tenses, but sometimes it's harder on the heart. So many times she'd met him before he'd loved her, but after she'd already been in love with him, utterly and irrevocably. So many spoilers.)

She's done so much. Met so many people. Broken so many rules - some of which deserved breaking and some of which... well. Sometimes a woman just needs to raise some hell. Especially if she's just acquired some really killer boots and a literally psychedelic shade of lippie.

And she's always loved the Doctor. Impossible not to. Impossible man.

The thing about living your life out of everyone else's order is that you learn that love isn't a finite thing. That you can love someone yesterday and tomorrow even if you haven't met today. That you can love multiple someones in multiple ways, sometimes on the same day. Because in a life lived out of order, you never know who you'll meet next. Or when. And you never know what will happen. Some people learn that the hard way. River had learned it kissing a gorgeous redhead with legs up to there, in a dark corner of River's campus bar. ( _Not_ included in the standard university curriculum, but River had always been fond of extra-curriculars.)

And it's that moment she remembers, because it's the moment, looking back, when River Song had stopped living her life according to the rule that said tomorrow had to follow yesterday. Because the stars had been in Amy Pond's eyes, and she'd grabbed after life just as hard as River had, and River had looked at her clothes and her smile and felt the seconds start to skip out of order. She was bright and laughing and River had wanted that. Had wanted her. Had wanted to know what it was behind the laughter that felt just a little sad. ("I think she was my first love," River told the Doctor one quiet night, partly to watch his eyes warm with memory and partly as an excuse to snog him senseless, just so he wouldn't feel jealous.)

So River had kissed a lovely, lovely girl, and then Amy had left, and all River had to convince herself it was real was a photograph, snapped on a whim, two silly girls with silly grins, unnaturally frozen, a moment in the stream. She had taken it out on occasion, to convince herself she hadn't imagined the whole evening. That moment, that meeting, that kiss - it hadn't felt much like a first step at all, not at the time, though looking back it is blindingly clear. But then, not much later, when River had been stuck on a starliner, gasping in the cold, stale air and horribly, desperately tied to the straight-line plod of seconds, that kiss had been what she'd remembered. It had been what she'd remembered, and it had been what convinced her to kick over the traces of time and causality and bet it all.

She'd won a blue box and a red-haired girl and a blue book. And, much, much later, a dark-eyed man - but that was getting things out of order again. ("There's luck," the Doctor said to River once, "and then there's making your own luck. You need a little bit of both.")

The Doctor had been a prize - a surprise - of his own, but he'd come later. Amy had been first, and still is, in a certain way, because love doesn't just end, but lingers on. Truthfully, it had to be Amy first. Red hair and soft lips and kisses that tasted just a tiny bit of tears. Because in the end, it's Amy's road River is traveling. Had traveled, River corrects herself, sitting on a virtual bed with a virtual book. The road she's on now is hers alone. No one can travel it but her. Just as the Doctor's path is his alone. There's an irony in that statement, and River's old enough now to appreciate it.

River remembers waking up in a time machine and being thankful it wasn't the starliner. She remembers meeting the TARDIS for the first time, that lovely girl. ("If only I'd known," River said to the Doctor, somewhere along the way, "I'd never have left her." The Doctor muttered something about being jealous of his own _ship_ and she'd offered him the opportunity to out-impress her. He had.)

She remembers the Doctor, their first real introduction - the first of so many odd meetings. The second, River supposes - the Doctor _had_ been the one to drag Amy out of the campus bar, but he hadn't stayed long enough for pleasantries.

She remembers breakfast, and a trip to New Cotacachi, and since the Doctor was there, she remembers a mind control ray, and overthrowing a government, and empanadas. She remembers what happened after empanadas: Amy's smooth, lithe curves under impossible sunlight, slippery in the cool water, in a swimming pool, in a time machine. River remembers coming so hard she felt boneless after, remembers the wicked grin on Amy's face. She remembers Amy's high, aching cry, ragged around the edges, her neck thrown back, her hands tight on River's shoulders, her body tight around River's fingers.

Mostly, River remembers Amy - so terribly, briefly sad in the middle of happiness.

But River also remembers leaving, or being left, for a second time, with only a blue book in her hands. (She'd very nearly hated the Doctor for that. She'd been so very young, and they'd told her so very little. She'd never liked being left in the dark.)

She remembers sitting at her desk and looking at those pages, with their scrawled messages, and turning the page. She remembers writing it all down.

The next day, she'd gone out and purloined the experimental time travel device from the Ancient Histories department, and never looked back. The future, the past, the present -they'd all been hers, and she'd seized them with both hands.

That's what she'd told herself, at any rate. Holding the blue journal in her hands, in the quiet of her unfamiliar room, River knows it's a lie. The only way to keep hold of a life lived out of order is to keep your memories straight. (The Doctor had shown her his shelves full of diaries. Those around his four-hundredth year had been particularly entertaining.)

When she'd found the book empty, after everything had ended, she'd known what she'd needed to do. The diary was empty, and it needed to be full, and Amy was the answer. And Amy had been a lovely bride. But by then, Amy wasn't River's and River wasn't Amy's, and Rory had been restored but the Doctor had to be remembered. By then, River had been older, and she'd understood more about the tears underneath Amy's kiss, the need in her grasp, all those years ago in River's life. It had been months - maybe weeks - for Amy.

River had been older, and Amy had still been so young.

But Amy had still cried at her own wedding, and the Doctor had arrived after all. By then, River had been old enough to take the bitter with the sweet.

("Sometimes," the Doctor said one night, in the dark, so quietly she almost didn't hear him, "Sometimes avoiding the slow path just means you age faster.")

River smooths her hand over the page and closes the book, the weight familiar and comforting in her hand. Every path has a first step, she thinks, whatever its order or speed. River's had been Amy, wild and laughing and irrevocable. And now River is here, saved to a new life, and another first step awaits, come what may. (May, River thinks, is just an anagram of Amy.)


End file.
